Question of the day

What was your best/worst first date?

Get your students to tell you about some of the best and worst first dates.

  • Level A1, A2, B1
  • Exercise: video with questions and discussion
  • Language focus: past tense verbs, embarrassing situations
  • Media: video

Awkward!

It’s been a long time since I’ve been on a first date. And frankly, I don’t miss them. There are so many ‘what if’s’. What if we have nothing to talk about? What if I’m boring? What if I don’t like him? What if he is the one? What if he is a sloppy eater? What if he is a lousy tipper? I remember my mind ping-ponging with random thoughts and situations that would probably never actually happen. It’s a mix of nerves and excitement, but it mostly it puts us in a rather vulnerable state where we are exposed and not fully in control.

Awkward silences, clumsy interactions, you just hope you can reach that moment where you can find something to connect over. Nonetheless, First dates can also produce some funny stories worth sharing.

Don’t mess it up

Splattered spaghetti on your white shirt? Spit out nonsense words instead of an actual sentence? Or perhaps you decided to break into a brand new pair of shoes that left you hobbling by the end of the night? Or worst of all, you meet an ex while on your date. I’m sure if you think about it, you can find all kinds of little horror stories that make for good memories.

Exercise

Work through the statements on this sheet and then take a look at the video to gather some of the key vocabulary.

The Video: “First Date” by First Date Team

Your turn

Check out this list of first-date mishaps and have your students draw inspiration or choose scenarios that may have happened to them. The first link features actual Tweets from real people. Some are hilarious.

Ask your students to prepare a little anecdote with some detail.

  • What were you wearing? What was the other person wearing?
  • Where did you go?
  • What did you eat?
  • What was your first impression?
  • What did you talk about?
  • What happened that was funny or embarrassing?
  • How did you both respond? (laugh, get embarrassed, ignore the situation, etc.)

Feeling sick? What do you have?

It’s fall and the viruses are running amok. As I type these lines, I am sitting in bed, with my weekend pj’s, a box of tissues and a cup of tea at arm’s length…humph! What are my symptoms you ask? I am sneezing, I have a runny nose, I have a dry cough, I feel tired and I am congested. All expressions we only use once in a while but are crucial for a second language speaker to have.

When my daughter was three, she woke up looking pale and feeling awful. As the day went by, she started running a small fever. Normally I would have given her some acetaminophen and kept her quiet. But when my little teary girl put her hands around her collar and told me that her neck hurt, I immediately thought of meningitis. I went into full mommy panic mode and no sooner had I put her little coat on than we were in the emergency room. Once we saw the doctor, he deduced that “neck” meant throat in her language. She did not have meningitis, but just a bad cold. My point is, words matter, especially when talking about your health.

Lessons introducing health vocabulary can be interesting because you can pack a lot into them. Given it is a familiar subject in our first language, the task really boils down to having English equivalent to words your students already know–which can feel really satisfying. But if you add some role-playing, you can review yes/no questions, give treatment advice with verbs in the simple present and even learn a thing or two about which symptoms can considered serious or not.

If you are looking for a first-language site to use as a reference or even a role-play launch pad, check out some of my favourite go-tos…

  • Pharma giant Pfizer has a nice little reference sheet that can be used for a role-play Q&A.
  • WebMD has symptom checker that can be interesting to play around with
  • And for advice and recommendations, WebMD has a nice article all headed with verbs.
  • WebMD also has a simple article on home remedies “that work”

Grammar in a spoonful of sugar anyone?

3 tips to nail your grammar lessons

When you say the word grammar, does your class suddenly give you the blank stare of death? Or perhaps you have a more mature class and they become overly focused on rules and lose sight of the communication goal of language. Whatever the reaction it causes, I find grammar lessons challenging.

It’s not that I am not good at grammar, I quite like it actually. But I’ve lived through many not-so-great grammar lessons (#introspectiveteacher).

1. Research how to explain it

It’s one thing to understand grammar it’s another thing to explain it. For this, YouTube is my best friend. Watch at least a couple of videos to see how others do it and either use the video in class or use the best of. One thing I told myself after some confusing and a little humiliating attempts and improvising… Never…ever improvise. At least I won’t.

2. Keep drills short

I had a teacher in university who used to say, “use a guerilla attack approach to grammar.” I think what she meant was, to keep it short, explain, practice, correct and move to the next thing.

3. Follow it up with a communication activity

Ideally, your next activity is a more communication-based activity that can provoke the context to use that grammar item. For that, I have made many suggestions in other blog posts (the list is at the end of this post).

Grammar challenges us (teachers and students) in different ways. It can be complex, dry and full of exceptions. Being overly focused on grammar comes at the cost of losing authentic dialogue. However, being underly focused can compromise accuracy. It’s a bit like poaching an egg, it’s not enough to know what an egg is, or how to boil water, it’s the subtle interaction of both that makes the dish. By the way, I also have a lesson on how to poach eggs. 😜

Here are some of Whole Language lessons I have that focus on grammar:

13 resources for ice-breaker questions

Need a good question to break the ice? I got you covered.

I’m sure you have experienced it. First day of ESL class, you plan an icebreaker activity, launch the question and you get the dreaded silent stares. What do you do, let them stew with the question and stand your ground, or come up with a follow-up question? Do you let them see you sweat, or pretend that that is what you wanted because you want them to think? “Please, please kind extroverted student somewhere out there in the crowd, get me out of this.”

Icebreaker activities always make me nervous. It’s often the first class, you don’t know your group, the chemistry is not established, you may not know their level and they are usually a bit shy. However, they are in an English second language class to develop their language skills, so it’s my job to warm them up and find some interesting questions that can inspire conversation.

I collect icebreakers like some people collect jewelry or stamps. I am always looking for creative, thought-provoking, not too deep, not too personal questions that people enjoy answering.

To me, it’s reminiscent of a high school dance where everyone is waiting for that great song that gets people on the dance floor. You can let loose and get lost in the crowd. Thus in my ESL class, I am a DJ of questions. When one doesn’t get the party going, I have plenty of others.

For your party…I mean class…needs, here are my best sources.

ICEBREAKERS

What should I wear today?

3 great sites to role-play shopping for clothes

I don’t know about you, but I love getting dressed in the morning. I know, not everyone does, but I do. In fact, there is a whole other version of me in a multiverse somewhere who is a fashion stylist. I love the colours, the textures the shapes and what style conveys to your entourage.

I also love teaching the vocabulary related to clothes and style in my ESL classes. We go “shopping” and role-play asking for certain pieces including colours, price, size, etc. But as with everything, I like to use real websites to do this following the Whole Language method. However, I am selective with my sites. They need to be clean, have clear names for the clothes (sometimes marketing can make things more complicated than it needs to be) and have good descriptions. Full disclosure, I have taken some writing contracts where I produce those descriptions, so I am especially critical of quality language there.

Here are some of my favourites sites and why:

Banana Republic

I can barely afford the clothes at BR, but I appreciate the simplicity of the pieces and the short, but well-crafted descriptions.

Charlie B

Clothes are for women only, so that is a bit of a bummer, but the descriptions tell a story. So nice. Make sure you click on the drop downs, it will tell you “Why we love it” which is great vocab for the role of the salesperson, and also gives you advice on what to wear it with. And it’s Canadian ❤️

Nordstrom.com

The descriptions are short, but full of juicy adjectives. They also carry shoes which can enhance your dialogue options.

DISCLAIMER😜

You might be tempted to buy. I get no commission on sales. Yes I love to shop, and yes I like these shops, but mainly I like these sites because the sites are easy to click through and the descriptions are well written and interesting to teach with.

What does your day look like in pictures?

Challenge your student to take pictures of a day in their lives. Eating, travelling, working, whatever makes up their day. Then you can do a series of “show and tells” with the photos. To make the activity even more engaging, I always suggest that the listeners should think of one or two questions to ask the presenters after the presentation is done. This will make the listening more active and get the speakers to dig a little deeper.

Is too much choice making us unhappy?

Level: B2, C1Language focus: modal auxiliaries, expressing opinions, questions
Exercise: Discussion questions in the postMedia: video

As a parent, I find I am sometimes in a sad little loop of not feeling good enough, looking for parenting advice, then trying that advice and being exhausted by the amount of energy it takes to be that good version of myself and returning to square one.

One example of this is the choice paradox. Many parenting books will tell you it’s a good practice to give your children choices rather than always dictating. Like when kids are picky eaters, give them a choice of vegetables. Or when they put up a fuss to get their winter clothes on, give them a choice of mittens, scarves and hats. The premise is that children resist because they need to have freedom (or the illusion of it). If you have tried this parenting method, you know that it will only take you so far before you are exhausted and your kids figure out that the options don’t really interest them.

Retail and marketing also leverage this concept as a key selling point. Seemingly attractive retailers are often those who offer choices, variety and options. But is this making our lives easier or more complicated? Are we making ourselves exhausted with the number of choices and like our children coming to the conclusion that many options just don’t interest us that much? Barry Schwartz’s Ted Talk questions whether we, like our children, are just under the illusion of freedom when in reality we are simply more confused and eventually disengaged.

Warm up

I suggest you start the lesson by torturing your students with these Would you Rather statements. Perhaps pair them up and have them discuss their choices. Then, mix it up a bit and ask the other person to choose for you. Did you like letting someone choose? Did you agree?

The video: The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz

I suggest you watch this in small snippets and do short Tell Backs along the way.

What concepts stand out in Schwartz’s talk?

What are the advantages of choice?

What are the two negative effects?

Why do we need experts?

What do you think Schwartz is telling us with the way he is dressed?

What are some of the events in his life that led to this conclusion?

Can you think of events in your life where you would have preferred to have less choice?

What are questions you have that you would prefer someone make a decision for you?

Talk about a choice you made that may have been ‘not good enough’ . What consequences did it have on your life?

Why do we lie?

  • Level: B2, C1
  • Activity: Agree/Disagree on TPT ($0.99)
  • Language focus: justify/explain a point of view
  • Media: video

Why do we lie? Notice that I didn’t ask if is lying wrong, or whether you consider honesty important–because in both cases, I’m pretty sure you would agree that the answer is “yes, but…” or “yes, except…”. We all lie, a bit, or a lot. The more interesting question is why.

Consider the extremes. Do you remember the comedy Liar Liar with Jim Carry? In it Carry plays the role of Fletcher Reede, a pathelogical liar who ends up being cursed to tell the truth–all the time. Ugly hairdo, need to lose a couple pounds, bad breath, it all comes flying out of Reede’s mouth and needless to say it gets him into a lot of trouble. But it is also very restorative. It urges Reede to express more vulnerable feelings and gain more trust and loyalty.

So let’s try to unpack the issue. Keeping famous movies as a template, let’s say lying can fall into different categories: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. In the Good category, birthday surprises, and hurtful opinions, in the Bad category, making up excuses to miss work or homework, and the Ugly category could contain breaking the law, dark secrets etc.

The point is, how and when we lie can generate an interesting reflection.

Warm up

Do a Mind Map of the Good, Bad, and Ugly lies

The Video: It’s OK to be Smart: Why do we lie?

Discussion

Use the statements in this handout to discuss some of the key elements of the video.

So many possibilities…I may I might

I am an avid visualizer. I love hypothetical dreaming. I test out lessons, see possible problems, and think of fun ways to connect the classroom to reality. It’s like a constant mini-movie up there. I don’t just visualize lessons, I play out conversations, memories, happy places etc…

Our ability to hypothesize and weigh possibilities is probably one of the most fascinating traits of humankind. With that deep and philosophical introduction, I would like to point you in the direction of this recent find: esllounge.com. It is a great site full of teaching resources definitely worth perusing.

For today, I am linking a nice little conversation exercise that is meant to get participants to use ‘may’ and ‘might’. Of course, if it doesn’t go in that direction, it ok too. At the very least, it should encourage hypothetical discussions.

Click on the image to go to the site

How do you ask for a raise?

  • Level: B1, B2, C1
  • Discussion questions in the post
  • Language focus: personal caracteristics, money, work tasks
  • Media: video

Life changes. And more specifically, it gets more expensive. Yet sometimes it can take time for your employer to catch up. So how can you tackle the prickly question of asking for a raise? Barbara Corcoran gives some rather poignant insights on how to orchestrate this discussion. I think it makes for a great ESL discussion. Not to mention a more generalized reflection on gender differences in the workplace.

Adding Value

I often hear the term adding value in corporate settings. It’s often thrown around to mean anything from doing good work to offering innovative thinking. Basically, to be able to show you add value to your job, you need to have a good bank of things you do (actions) and ways that you behave (personal qualities).  After watching Corcoran’s video, I invite you and your students to make this list using these vocabulary resources.

Courage

In the end, asking for a raise takes a great amount of courage. What are your risking when you ask? Your job security, your comfort zone, exposing that you are unhappy with your work conditions (which could prompt your employer to find someone else) and being told ‘no’. What are you risking when you don’t ask? Feeling underpaid, undervalued, feeling like you are working just as hard for less in the case of salaries not adjusting to the cost of living. If you feel you are due for a raise, it is the ultimate Catch 22. Damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.

Warm Up

  • MindMap the words related to money, raise, and reasons why we need more money?
  • Make a pro/cons list of asking for a raise.
  • Do you have any good advice or stories about asking for a raise?

The Video: Barbara Corcoran Explains How to Ask for a Raise

  • What are the steps you need to take to set up the meeting?
  • What are some of the differences between men and women when asking for raises?
  • If you are timid (and Corcoran says “woman,” but I think this applies to anyone who is timid) what should you do to overcome this?
  • What are Corcoran’s recommendations on how to use an outside offer to initiate a positive discussion about compensation?
  • What are her parting ideas about loyalty?

Have a great class!

Mel

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